Spring 2014 Food Not Fracking Tour

02Apr

This is more of a travelogue than a proper reportback, but we hope it will capture the spirit of our trip better that way. We did dutifully take minutes at these meetings, but we won’t be posting those here. What we really wanted was to cull a variety of impressions from farmers we met across the state. Although it can’t possibly stand in for the multiple interactions and discussions, in the end we did find a good deal of consensus.

Here’s how it went:

We started our tour in early February’s polar vortex with a meeting in Oneonta, followed by stops in Albany, Rosendale, Montour Falls, Ithaca, Roscoe, Callicoon, and the NOFA (Northeast Organic Farming Association) conference in Auburn (nearly Canada).

In Oneonta, our local organizer warned us that folks around there were reticent, under pressure from neighbors who’ve leased, a barrage of “Friends of Natural Gas” lawn signs, pro-gas town boards, and decades of poor economic prospects…